The invention under consideration concerns improved sugar-free products, their production and use, in particular, coated products, their production and use.
Coated products contain a coating produced from sugar, sugar alcohols, chocolates, and/or other glazes with a liquid, soft, or solid core. Chewing gum inserts, fruits, compressed material, or other pharmaceutical products are, for example, used as cores. Thus, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,453 describes a sugar-free coated chewing gum, whose coating contains hydrogenated isomaltulose. This chewing gum is obtained by coating with a syrup which contains the hydrogenated isomaltulose. Thus, 1-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-mannitol (1,1-GPM) and 6-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol (1,6-GPS), dissolved in approximately equimolar quantities, are present in the syrup coating.
A number of methods for the production of coated products are also known. Essentially, a distinction is made between soft coating, hard coating, and suspension dragee formation. Soft coating means the application of saccharides dissolved in water on cores which are moving, wherein after each application, saccharide powder is sprinkled, so as to bind the moisture. This type of coating forms a soft dragée coating (European Patent No. 1,625,311 A1). The fact that the metering of the syrup used for the coating—that is, the dissolved saccharide—and the metering of the powder must be coordinated with one another proves to be a disadvantage, in addition to the complicated processing execution.
Hard coating is likewise understood to mean—just as with soft coating—the application of saccharides dissolved in water on cores which are moving, wherein, however, saccharide powder is not applied, but rather the nonaqueous components are immediately dried. As with soft coating, a large number of different individual applications (50-120) are carried out, between which drying is undertaken with warm or cold air, so that various thicknesses of dragée coatings can be produced. Also, hard coating methods with two different saccharide solutions, which are applied after one another (“dual-composition coating”), are also known. Thus, in more recent times, methods are described in which maltitol-containing layers are first applied and then the remaining coating was built up with xylitol (U.S. Pat. No. 5,376,389). These methods, however, use two different saccharides for the production of the solution to be applied and accordingly, have to be carried out in a complicated manner. In addition, coating layers made of xylitol detach readily during the coating process, in particular on the corners and edges of the coated cores.
Both in hard coating as well as in soft coating methods, the problem of the adhesion tendency upon application of the aqueous solutions arises—for example, when using hydrogenated isomaltulose for the coating. This adhesion tendency causes the coating material to stick together or a sticking to the walls of the container used for the coating.
A third possibility for coating is to be found in the use of a suspension. The suspended mixture used up to now—for the most part only with sugar-containing products—consists of a liquid phase (which, for example, contains sugar, rice starch, and glucose dissolved in water) and a solid phase which consists of fine, crystalline sugar particles. The separate use of various sucroses is characteristic of this type of suspension-coating.
The coating products obtained with the described methods tend to lose their crispiness during storage because of the composition of their coating and their core. The reason for this is apparently to be found in the diffusion of moisture from the core into the coating. In the long run, this process also leads to undesired drying out of the dragée core. Conversely, the known products exhibit an undesired water absorption in a moist warm atmosphere, whose results are sticky, soft products, which are thus unattractive for consumption.
Also the products which are not coated and have been known up to now in the state of the art are capable of improvement with regard to their storage capacity, sweetening power, or solubility. These disadvantages originate in the type and composition of the saccharides used for the production of the products or their mixtures, such as hydrogenated isomaltulose. Hydrogenated isomaltulose is formed by the hydrogenation of isomaltulose and contains the components 6-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol (below, referred to as 1,6-GPS) and 1-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-mannitol (referred to below as 1,1-GPM) in a ratio of approximately 1:1. Hydrogenated isomaltulose is dissolved only moderately in water, and in dissolved form tends to adhere upon application to the surfaces involved in the coating.